Millicom to support AU in fight against Ebola

Millicom has revealed that it will be supporting the African Union’s (AU) campaign, which is intended to raise funds to fight the Ebola virus in West Africa.

Mobile Operators across Africa including: Airtel and Airtel Nigeria, Econet Wireless, Etisalat, MTN Group and MTN Zambia, Orange, Safaricom, Vodacom and Vodafone Ghana are participating in this campaign which will run between now and the end of February 2014.

The initiative will be operating under the hashtag ‘#AfricaAgainstEbola’, and is intended to use an dedicated SMS platform in order to raise funds for the deployment of African health workers to affected countries. The AU is leading the effort under its African Union Support to the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa (ASEOWA) mission.

The SMS fundraising campaign will use the short code 7979 with local adaptations where technology requires. Customers will be asked to text ‘Stop Ebola’ to this code in order to donate in their respective countries.

Earlier this week, Millicom CEO Hans-Holger Albrecht, revealed that he will be stepping down from his position at the end of 2014.

The Ebola outbreak has captured the attention of many large corporations within the ICT sector. Companies like MTN, SES, Liquid Telecom, Econet, IBM, Airtel, LG and Samsung have all responded to the outbreak in meaningful and impactful ways.

The current outbreak in west Africa, (first cases notified in March 2014), is the largest and most complex Ebola outbreak since the Ebola virus was first discovered in 1976. There have been more cases and deaths in this outbreak than all others combined.